This is the opening sequence for an anime. Let me know if the theme music sounds familiar — is this music not copyrighted?
The series is based on a manga, So I’m a spider, so what?, which I own and have read. I had hopes that it would be something like Jay Hosler‘s work, which is excellent and informative, and that it would be useful for teaching about how wonderful spiders are. It’s not. It’s this bizarre fusion of spider biology with video game dogma, and most of the emphasis is on how this person transported into a spider body can go up in levels and acquire new spider powers. Maybe you’d enjoy it if you’re more into video games than arachnids, but I’m the reverse of that.
It sounds just different enough to avoid legal entanglements.
To be clear, this isn’t the opening sequence of the show, which doesn’t seem to be available yet; this is a fan-made video splicing together animation from trailers and previews with a cover of the Spider-man theme, by an artist credited in the video description. That’s what the “AMV” in the title means – Anime Music Video, an unofficial edit remixing video and audio, possibly from multiple sources.
And yes, it’s not about being a real spider, but about the common fantasy of being reincarnated in a magical world with video-game-like powers – except in this case as one of the lowest-tier monsters a player would normally kill by the dozens in the tutorial.
Why aren’t there more video games that let you play as a spider?
Actual opening:
So, how into video games are arachnids, anyway?
It’s not all that accurate on the biology side, but it is pretty darned good from the standpoint that the main character is presented as being autistic. And unlike a lot of media, it’s treated with care and not used as the punchline for a joke or as if it gives her superpowers. That’s pretty impressive, especially for Japan, which does not tend to do so well when it comes to mental health issues in media.
Jonathan L Howard’s protagonist Johannes Cabal (necromancer, sometime savior of the world, always sarcastic) has a good lady friend who is a spider demon.
I wish the Terry Pratchett enthusiasts would support an anime about the couple, the stories are marvels of black humor.
@3 There was <a href=”https://youtu.be/_Vamqz4zkK02>one on PS1 way back in 1997. Though technically you’re playing as a robotic spider operated via neural connection by an unconscious kidnapped scientist trying to get his body back.
Hey it’s an Isekai anime, the game elements are an established trope, you see it in almost every anime of this type, where the main character dies (almost always hit by a truck – Japan’s greatest serial kiler Truck-kun) and reincarnates into a new world. They find out more about th eworlk and how it operates through those game elements. Unlike most Isekai the protagonist is not overpowered, just another lowly spider. That said it looks like a cute and funny little anime. I’ll reserve my judgement after I’ve seen a couple of episodes.
More video game spiders:
Deadly Creatures for the Wii allows the player to control both a tarantula and a scorpion.
Donkey Kong Country 2 has a spider as one of the animal companions. He can spit webs at enemies and create an unlimited supply of web platforms.
The PSN game Spider: Rite of the Shrouded Moon is about a spider building webs and catching prey in an abandoned mansion.
A classic video game spider: in the very old Maxis game SimAnt, there was a spider on the surface of every patch of ground which would hunt ants. There was a cheat code which would let you control it instead of the ants. It also had its own word bubbles if you used the cheat to make the ants “talk”. (And there was another cheat code which would let the spider “hunt” by shooting laser beams. Ah, Maxis before The Sims took over.)
@11: Maxis before it was bought by EA, destroyer of good IPs.